A New Adventure - Part 1
Four Years ago I saw Sedona, Arizona for the first time. It was a place I had longed to see for over 20 years of my adult life.
I was on a mini vacation to visit my sweetheart, who had moved to his small home town in Arizona several months before to spend time with his father who's health was failing. Prior to that we had been together for almost two years. I was unsure of our fate when he left where we lived in St. Louis, but I had made a couple visits in the months since he left and we were still.very much in love The long distance thing was hard but with each visit & return home I was feeling something changing in me.
I had been my own boss & had my own hair salon business for nearly 25 years. I had created a very good name for myself in many areas in & around the hair & makeup industry. I had surpassed every dream & goal I had set for myself, with the exception that I was not a national brand nor a millionaire. I had tried everything I knew how, to get there but it hadn't happened. My spirit & passion for what I did for a living was waning.
When I visited my sweethearts home town, I felt a peace & quiet that I had not felt before. Being there reminded me of a wish I had told a friend of mine almost a year before this. I said I was tired & that I wished sometimes that I could disappear & go live with a grandma in a house on a farm, by myself so that no one could bother me, where I could have solitude, peace & quiet. A place where I wouldn't have any responsibilities except to exist & maybe write a book or two.
And a year or so later, here I was in a house owned by my sweethearts parents, that used to be his grandparents home, on 4 acres of land, down the road from his mom & dad. When I described this place I'd been escaping to, my girlfriend said, "I think you have an opportunity for what you wished for." Yes, so it would seem, a souls wish could be filled if I could give up everything I'd ever known. I did not know how I could do that, but my soul & my sweetheart was telling me, I could if I wanted to.
I had been on a soul seeking journey for a few years since my divorce. A book I had read during the process was very apropos, "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert, where she realizes she doesn't belong in the life she had created for herself & decides to divorce & travel the world, in search of herself. In that book she wrote something at the very end that resonated so deeply for me. She said, "I believe that there exists in the universe something called, The Physics of the Quest. A force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity & momentum. It goes like this.... If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar & comforting (which can be anything from your house to old bitter resentments) and set out on a truth seeking journey (either externally or internally) and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself... then the truth will not be withheld from you." Or so I've come to believe. Well that summed it up for me.
When I left my husband & my luxury home years before, I felt I was leaving everything, the only thing I took with me was my drive, my name & reputation I'd built. I had survived on that the last few years. If I left "that" I'd truly be leaving everything familiar, comforting and trusted. Everything I knew to be my life support. It seemed impossible, but somehow deep inside, I knew I had to do it.
So here I was, on a mini vacation to glorious Sedona, just a couple hours from where I could live, in the beautiful landscape where I could escape to. The earth, the rocks, the trees & the sky spoke to me & said to come. And I knew I was done with where I had been the last 20 years. Now how was I going to go about it?
